Group Cognition

Overview

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building--group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.

About the Author

Gerry Stahl is Associate Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University. He is founding coeditor of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

Endorsements

"In this bold and brilliant book, Stahl integrates three distinct fields of knowledge: computational design, communication studies, and the learning sciences. Such an interdisciplinary effort is both timely and necessary to foster innovations for human learning. This book shows how small-group cognition can be the underlying building block for individual and collective knowledge building."--Sten Ludvigsen, Professor and Director of InterMedia, University of Oslo"—

"Gerry Stahl's new work targets a vitally important issue facing a twenty-first-century knowledge-based economy: How can group cognition be fostered as a new unit of analysis for research and design of computer systems crafted for building collaborative knowledge? There are many golden nuggets in this volume that will help advance the collective intelligence available on the planet for finding and tackling hard problems, from educational systems to informal workplace learning." Roy Pea , Stanford University"—

"Gerry Stahl's new work targets a vitally important issue facing a 21st-century knowledge-based economy: How can *group cognition* be fostered as a new unit of analysis for research and design of computer systems crafted for building collaborative knowledge? There are many golden nuggets in this volume that will help advance the collective intelligence available on the planet for finding and tackling hard problems, from educational systems to informal workplace learning."--Roy Pea, Stanford University"—